


World Keeps Turning

by PeachyPansexual



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: it's the forsaken stuff!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:49:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23206525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PeachyPansexual/pseuds/PeachyPansexual
Summary: The world goes on, even when it feels like its ended.
Kudos: 4





	World Keeps Turning

Like everyone else in the Tower, Ferris-3 was... She had... She felt...

Empty.

Everyone had expected a triumphant return when Cayde-6 and one of the UTDR’s veteran  Godkillers had gone off for a mission. Instead, Anya  Chernikovna and the  kinderguardian who’d been sent along with them had come back with a corpse.

Cayde-6 was dead. Ferris had known him for centuries, back when  _ he _ was still a rookie, and had watched him go from  wise-cracking punk greener than the gear he wore, to legendary Hunter Vanguard who hadn’t improved his sense of humor in over 300 years, to...

To the hollow shell underneath a grim shroud bearing the symbol of the Vanguard. 

And the worst part was Ferris didn’t even feel sad. She didn’t feel  _ anything _ . She had closed up her lab for the day, half expecting to need to so she could have time to mourn while an army of Guardians stormed the Reef to try and rein in the prison break without trying to knock her door down for fresh gear first. Her Ghost, Pendragon, knew it was best to leave her alone to process, but wasn’t far, just in case she did something rash. Maybe she really did need the time, if you could call staring blankly at a wall, willing the shapes in scorch marks on metal to spell out something that would make sense of the world, mourning. When the swirls on the walls stayed unreadable, she tried to dig down into herself and summon up tears, to no avail.  _ Do I need to cry? Or do I just want to? To feel like I’m mourning him properly? _ No tears came, not even the ghost of prickling sensation near her optics.  _ Can I not cry because I’m an early model Exo? Or is it just... me? Have I lost too many people to feel it anymore? _

In her rumination, she’d pulled up some old schematics of hers without realizing and flipped through them idly, not really seeing the pages in front of her. _Can’t mourn. Can’t work. Might scream. Maybe that’ll help._ She took a deep breath, not that she needed it, and almost let loose with the harshest, most feral sound she could muster, but stopped when she noticed the schematic she’d left off on.

**_ [Lucky Pants, custom order #000342, for Cayde-6, discretion requested] _ **   
**_ [[He’s totally using these to cheat on a bet with Shaxx. My money says he loses anyway. Regardless, I’m getting free lunch for a month, plus commission fee.]] _ **

Ferris reread the description three times and couldn’t help but laugh, even  through the tightness in her throat as an old memory replayed in the back of her head, still clear as day.

_ “It’s not cheating, Fare, I just need something to  _ _ gimme _ _ an edge! A lucky charm, y’know?” _

_ “I’m a woman of science,  _ _ Cayde _ _ , I don’t believe in luck. Just admit you want me to help you play dirty.” _

_ “I would never! How about this, you figure out how to turn  _ _ science _ _ into luck that makes bullets magically reload, and I’ll treat you to ramen lunch until your next rebirthday.” _

_ “Fine, I’ll make you a holster or something.” _

_ “A lucky holster?” _

_ “A lucky holster.” _

A knock interrupted Ferris-3's thoughts.

“I’m closed, go bug someone else for a gun!” She shouted back. Another insistent knock. “Read the sign! It’s my damn day off, go bug  Shaxx or that Drifter creep!” More knocking, and it wouldn’t stop this time. She got up, flung the door open, and was fully prepared to lay into whoever had decided they were more important than her mourning.  _ Wallowing, more like. _ She raised a sparking  weldwrench threateningly and then lowered it immediately when she realized who her company was.

“I figured you’d understand me not being in any mood to deal with anyone else.” Anya said with a raised eyebrow. “While everyone else is trying to deal with the escapees, we have,” she paused and thought for a moment, “higher profile targets. Figured you’d be our best choice to gear up.”

“Right. Well, wrong, actually. I’m not exactly in the best headspace to help you out, and I’m sure any tuning I make to DARCI is just  gonna make her mad.” Ferris said, killing the power on her  weldwrench and dropping it onto a table with a clatter. “But you can help yourself to whatever you need, I guess. You know where everything is, I’ll be in the back if you need help.” She turned, ready to go sulk in the back room until Anya left.

“We’re not here for me, Frankenstein, we’re here to gear up my trainee.” Anya said sharply, and caught Ferris by the back of her shirt.

“Wh\- I’m sorry, what?” Ferris turned back to her guest. Behind the imposing Awoken Warlock was another Exo like herself. _Remarkably_ like herself, Ferris realized when she stepped forward to introduce herself and Anya did a rapid double-take between them. “You must be the new Warlock that went to the Reef, yeah? And hey, same model!” She said, walking around the newbie who was nearly identical to her. “Later in production, judging by the carbon fiber shell, but not actually _late_ in production since you’re only a few inches taller than me, rather than a full foot like some of the others on our line I’ve met. Plus,” Ferris tapped lightly on the other Exo’s forehead and listened, “that’s carbon fiber shell laminated onto the mystery titanium alloy, not full carbon fiber replacement shell, so they’d only started getting low on resources, not fully tapped yet. I’m a little jealous, though, that black and purple color scheme is killer! Hold up, I’ve got some spare shaders someone traded me if you wanna recolor some of this stuff I’ve got laying around.” Ferris said, and clambered up a nearby shelf with a newfound energy. _Mourn later, help_ _rookie_ _now._

“When you warned me about her being eccentric, I wasn’t expecting....” The newbie started and then stopped, likely thinking of a polite way to put it.

“A complete disregard for pants, personal space, and organizational systems that make sense to people other than just her? Yeah, that’s Ferris-3 in a nutshell. But she’s a genius and her tech  is consistently bleeding edge, so take whatever she’ll give you.” Anya explained curtly. But less harshly than usual, Ferris noticed even with her head in a bucket of miscellaneous ‘ _ I don’t have all the glimmer but I can give you this for the difference’  _ items. 

“Hey, I wore shorts today, which is downright fuckin’ courteous for me, considering I wanted to be left alone!” She called back. “Penny, help me out here? Hey, new girl, sending you a bunch of shaders, feel free to pick through what you like and sell what you don’t!” Pendragon appeared briefly in her outstretched palm to transmat the pile of shaders that ha d somehow been shoved to the very back of the top shelf, and then transmatted Ferris back to the floor for good measure. “By the way, I didn’t catch your name.” Ferris said and held out her hand for a handshake. The new Warlock took it fairly uncertainly while Pendragon floated around Anya and her Ghost, Ilya, to strike up a quiet conversation with them.

“Uh... Yeah. There’s a reason for that.”

“What, did you owe me money in a past life?”

“No idea. I don’t know anything about me, not even my name. It’s been a month since I got brought back and nothing’s stuck. Mostly everyone’s stuck with newbie or rookie for me.” She sounded clearly less than thrilled. “Every time someone has tried to come up with one for me it’s been shit like ‘Overlord Doomsayer’ or ‘Bonglord69’ or ‘HornyBot420’ or shit like that.”

“Oh man, yeah. Light, but I got sick of the horn jokes people used to make. Never let another Guardian pick your name. Okay, take off your robe.” Ferris said.

“What?!”

“Not get naked! Just the top layer, I’m  gonna pop off a panel on your shoulder blade, that should have a serial number and a series nickname for you.”

The Warlock hesitated, then shucked off the first layer of robes. “Alright, but the Vanguard already tried this when I first showed up. It was filed off.”

“Good to know, but they don’t have my handy-dandy ‘motherfucker you don’t get to hide that you tried to steal my guns’ scanner that I use when motherfuckers file the serial numbers off the shit from my personal vault. Penny, my tools please?” Ferris asked, but Pendragon was still busy talking with Anya and Ilya. “Ugh, fine, get it myself.”

She dug through her scattered tools for her scanner and a screwdriver, then returned to her customer who was sitting stiffly on a stool. Ferris carefully leveraged the plate off her shoulder, handed it to her patient, ran the scanner over the scuffed section of metal for any imperfections left when the info was stamped and....

Nothing.

She ran it again.

Nothing.

She ran it a third time over a rifle she hadn’t gotten around to restoring yet and the numbers were pulled up with no problem.

“Well, shit. That’s really weird. I  gotta wonder if  _ you  _ did that, if it stayed gone post-resurrection. Seems like there’s a really good chance that, whoever you used to be, you didn’t want to be remembered.” Ferris took back the shoulder plate and snapped it into place, then handed The Bot with No Name her robe. “That’s  gonna make this requisition tricky, but I guess I could put the order under your Ghost’s name?”

“Terra. And  _ I’m _ back to square one.”

“You could look at it that way if you want, or you could take it as your chance to pick a name that really suits you. In the meantime, if everyone’s been calling you stuff like rookie, why not Rook? Go monochrome and play up the chess aesthetic.” Ferris said, digging through and picking out a balanced selection of weapons for the poor kid about to follow Anya in over both their heads. “You’ve already got a good baseline for the look.” 

“Huh. I’ll... I’ll think about that, actually. Although, didn’t you say never let another Guardian name you?”

“I’m not a Guardian. I may have a Ghost but I haven’t been a proper Titan in centuries. Uh, except my two-week stint two years ago to go yell at Osiris. But nah, I’m R&D. Anyways, for the names. You can also pick a random number, just preferably a low one since those do actually mean something, and you don’t want people thinking you’ve got robo dementia from too many resets, like Banshee.”

“I’m sorry, too many  _ what?” _

“Yeah... Short version, it’s like hitting ‘clear cache’ on your brain. No harm, but... ugh,it’s complicated. Tell you what, when you guys get back from storming the castle, I’ll answer all your ‘I’m an Exo, now what?’ questions. Pretty much all the original data on what makes us tick is gone with the Golden Age, but I’ve put together enough data from studying myself, and anyone else like us who’d sit still long enough, plus a bunch of anecdotal stuff, to make adjusting easier. Cause there’s a lot.”

“Right. Okay then. And what about my gear?”

“I’ve already got everything picked. You can either buy or borrow." Ferris explained, gestured to a pile of purple engrams, and pulled up the forms on her  datapad . Anya stepped forward before her ward could speak.

“I’m buying.” She said, plucking the  datapad from Ferris’ hand and filling everything out. “You two can play 20 questions later, for now you’ve taken enough time. You go ahead and get suited up, rookie.” The newer Warlock nodded and left. “As for you, Frankenstein.”

Ferris turned on her heel, not at all up to whatever ‘I’m trying to make myself unlikable’ lecture Lady  Chernikovna had in mind for her, even if today she didn’t seem her usual prickly self. But before she could duck into the back room, she felt herself yanked back by the shirt again, and before she could protest, she could feel herself being squeezed.

Anya  Chernikovna , Queen’s Shield, Slayer of the Court of Oryx and intentionally the least likable woman in the Tower...

...Was giving her a hug. Ferris returned it, albeit somewhat awkwardly.

“So, did Penny tell you to do this?”

“She said that you were in need of comfort.  Cayde’s death hit you harder than you would show.” Anya’s voice rumbled through her chest, her voice tinged with Reef and Russian accents in equal measure, and beyond that... sadness?

“...Did you need this hug too?” Ferris asked, noticing that it was a long and tight enough embrace to be associated with her serial bear-hugger uncle rather than her, but not inclined to actually let go.  _ Blessed Light, when’s the last time I just hugged someone like this? _

“No one will believe you.” Anya responded simply and finally pulled away.

“You’re right about that. Not even if I had video.” Ferris said and watched Anya brush the wrinkles out of her robes. “Now go. You’ve got some asses to kick.” Anya nodded and swept out of the room. “And bring that kid back in one piece! I like her!”  _ World keeps turning. Might as well keep spinning my wheels with it. _

**Author's Note:**

> Welp! It's been 400 years since I posted anything, figured I'd toss in the snippets I've been throwing at my friends back n forth cause we like making each other sad.


End file.
